Jonathan  Edwards:  A  Study 


AN  ADDRESS 

Delivered  at  Stockbridge,  Massachusetts 

October  5,  1903 

By  John  DeWitt 

PROFESSOR  IN   PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


LIBRARY  OF  PRINCETON 


APR  -7  2005 


THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


EX  7260  .E3  D4  ^904 

De  Witt,  John,  1842-1923. 

Jonathan  Edwards:  a  study 


Jonathan  Edwards:  A  Study 


AN  ADDRESS 

Delivered  at  Stockbridge,  Massachusetts 

October  5,  1903 

By  John  DeWitt 

PROFESSOR  IN   PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


Reprinted  from  The  Princeton  Theological  Review 
for  January,  1904 


LIBRARY  OF  PRINCETON 


APR  -7  2005 


THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


JONATHAN    EDWARDS:   A  STUDY.* 

JAM  deeply  indebted  to  your  Committee  for  the  honor  they 
have  done  me  in  inviting  me  to  take  part  in  this  celebration. 
My  hesitation  in  accepting  their  invitation  was  due  solely  to  the 
feeling  I  had  that  a  son  of  New  England  could  more  appropriately 
than  a  stranger  ask  your  attention  to  an  appreciation  of  this  great 
New  Englander.  This  hesitation  was  overcome,  partly  by  the  cor- 
diality with  which  the  invitation  was  extended,  and  partly  by  the 
consideration  that  Princeton,  where  Edwards  did  his  last  work 
and  where  his  body  lies  to-day,  might  well  be  represented  on  the 
occasion  by  which  we  have  been  assembled.  Moreover,  Princeton 
College,  when  Edwards  was  called  to  its  presidency,  was  largely  a 
New  England  institution  of  learning.  Both  of  his  predecessors  in 
that  office,  Jonathan  Dickinson  and  Aaron  Burr,  were  natives  of 
New  England,  graduates  of  the  College  at  New  Haven  and  Congrega- 
tional ministers.  Associated  with  Dickinson  and  Burr  in  the  plant- 
ing of  the  College  were  not  only  other  Yale  men,  but  Harvard  men 
also:  Ebenezer  Pemberton  and  David  Cowell  and  Jacob  Green 
and,  above  all,  Jonathan  Belcher,  sometime  Royal  Governor  of  the 
Colony  of  Massachusetts  and  ex-ofjicio  Overseer  of  Harvard,  his 
alma  mater;  who,  when  afterward  he  was  commissioned  Royal 
Governor  of  the  Province  of  New  Jersey,  to  repeat  his  own  words, 
"adopted  as  his  own  this  infant  College,"  gave  to  it  a  new  and 
more  liberal  charter,  and  so  largely  aided  it  by  private  gifts  and 
official  influence  that  its  Trustees  called  him  its  "  founder,  patron 
and  benefactor."  I  am  glad  as  a  Princeton  man  to  find  in  the  anni- 
versary of  the  birth  of  one  of  its  Presidents  an  opportunity  to  ac- 
knowledge the  University's  great  debt  to  New  England.  And,  if 
you  will  permit  a  personal  remark,  I  cannot  forget  that  in  coining 
to  these  services  I  am  returning  to  the  Commonwealth  of  which  T 

*  Address  delivered  in  the  Meeting  House  of  the  Parish  Church  of  Stockbridge, 
Mass..  October  .5,  1903,  at  the  celebration,  by  the  Berkshire  Conferences  of  Con- 
gregational Churches,  of  the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Jonathan 
Edwards;  and  repeated  in  Miller -Chapel,  Princeton  Theological  Seminary, 
October  16,  1903. 


•| 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A  STUDY.  89 

am  proud  to  have  been  a  citizen,  and  to  the  Massachusetts  Asso- 
ciation of  Congregational  Ministers  whose  hst  of  pastors  for  six 
successive  years  contained  my  name.*  I  should  have  to  efface  the 
memory  of  a  pastorate  exceptionally  happy,  and  of  unnumbered 
acts  of  kindness  from  the  living  and  the  dead,  in  order  not  to 
feel  grateful  and  at  home  to-day. 

But,  after  all,  the  highest  justification  of  this  commemoration  of 
a  man  born  two  centuries  ago  is  not  that  his  genius  and  character 
and  career  reflect  glory  on  the  people  and  the  class  from  whom  he 
sprang,  but  that  they  contain  notable  elements  of  universal  interest 
and  value.  The  great  man  is  great  because  in  some  great  way  he 
adequately  addresses,  not  what  is  exceptional,  not  what  is  distinc- 
tive of  any  class  or  people,  but  what  is  human  and  common  to  the 
race;  to  whose  message,  therefore,  men  respond  as  men;  whose 
eulogists  and  interpreters  are  not  necessarily  dwellers  in  his  district 
or  people  of  his  blood;  who  is  the  common  property  of  all  to  study,  to 
^J^joy^  to  revere  and  to  celebrate.  It  is,  above  all,  because  Jonathan 
Edwards  belongs  to  this  small  and  elect  class  that  we  are  gathered 
to  honor  his  memory  by  recalling  his  story  and  reflecting  on  the 
elements  of  his  greatness. 

It  would  be  inappropriate,  certainly  in  this  place  and  before  this 
audience,  for  a  stranger  to  repeat  the  well-known  story  of  his  life. 
I  shall  better  meet  your  expectations  if  I  shall  reproduce  the  im- 
pressions of  the  man  made  on  me  by  a  renewed  study  of  his  collected 
writings  and  his  life. 

We  shall  agree  that  the  inward  career  of  Edwards  was  singularly 
self-consistent;  that  from  its  beginning  to  its  close  it  is  exception- 
ally free  from  incongruities  and  contradictions ;  that  in  him  Words- 
worth's line,  "The  child  is  father  to  the  man,"  finds  a  signal  illus- 
tration. When  we  are  brought  into  contact  with  a  hfe  so  unified, 
whose  development  along  its  own  lines  has  not  been  hindered  or 
distorted  by  external  disturbances  as  violent  even  as  that  suffered 
by  Edwards  at  Northampton,  we  naturally  look  for  its  principle  of 
unity,  the  dominating  quality  which  subordinated  to  itself  all  the 
others,  or,  if  you  like,  which  so  interpenetrated  all  his  other  traits 
as  to  become  his  distinctive  note.  We  are  confident  that  such  a 
quality  there  must  have  been,  and  that  if  we  are  happy  enough  at 
once  to  find  it,  we  shall  have  in  our  possession  the  master  key  which, 
so  far  as  may  be  to  human  view,  will  open  to  us  the  departments  of 
his  thought  and  feeling  and  activity. 

A  century  later  than  Edwards  there  was  born  another  great  New 

♦Pastor  of  the  Central  Church,  Boston. 


90  THE  pi;l\cetox  theological  review. 

Englander — Ralph  Waldo  Emerson — between  whom  and  Edwards 
there  is  a  strong  likeness  as  well  as  a  sharp  contrast.  Because 
this  is  his  centennial  year,  Emerson  like  Edwards  is  just  now  es- 
pecially present  to  our  minds,  and  one  is  tempted  to  compare  and 
contrast  the  two.  To  this  temptation  I  shall  not  yield.  But  in 
order  that  we  may  properly  approach  and  seize  for  ourselves  a 
fine  formula  of  Edwards'  dominant  quality,  permit  me  to  recall  to 
you  a  study  of  Emerson  by  a  litterateur  of  great  charm  and  wide 
acceptance.  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  in  his  well-known  lecture,  says 
that  Emerson  is  "not  a  great  poet,"  he  "is  not  a  great  man  of 
letters,"  he  "is  not  a  great  philosopher."  Mr.  Arnold,  I  think, 
does  great  injustice  to  Emerson  in  two  of  these  negations.  If  I 
did  not  think  so  I  should  not  associate  him  with  so  great  a  man 
as  Edwards.  I  am  not,  indeed,  concerned  to  defend  the  claims 
of  Emerson  to  "a  place  among  the  great  philosophers."  His 
treatment  of  particular  subjects  was  marked  by  discontinuity; 
and  his  tendency  to  gnomic,  sententious  forms  of  speech  betrayed 
him  not  seldom  into  overstatement  or  exaggeration.  Now,  than 
discontinuity  and  overstatement  there  can  scarcely  be  conceived 
more  deadly  foes  to  system-building,  to  the  construction  of  a 
world- theory;  and  the  construction  of  a  world-theory  is  the  end 
of  all  philosophizing.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  Emerson 
ever  permitted  himself  to  rest  in  any  fixed  theory  of  the  universe. 
I  have  the  impression  that  for  a  fixed  view  of  the  universe  he 
never  felt  the  need,  and  that  from  all  actual  views  of  the  universe 
which  have  been  fixed  in  formulas  he  revolted.  And,  therefore, 
when  Mr.  Arnold  says,  "Emerson  cannot  be  called  with  justice  a 
great  philosophical  writer — he  cannot  build,  he  does  not  construct 
a  philosophy,"  I  do  not  know  on  what  grounds  we  can  dissent 
from  his  statement. 

But  when  he  goes  further  and,  with  the  same  positiveness,  says, 
"We  have  not  in  Emerson  a  great  writer  or  a  great  poet,"  Mr. 
Arnold  passes  from  the  region  of  opinion  based  on  considerations 
whose  force  all  estimate  alike,  into  the  region  of  opinion  which  has 
its  source  and  ground  in  mere  individual  temperament  and  taste. 
Moreover,  greatness  is  a  word  so  vague  as  scarcely  to  raise  a  definite 
issue;  and  this  fact  might  well  have  prevented  so  careful  and 
acute  a  critic  from  employing  it  to  deny  to  Emerson  a  quality 
which  Mr.  Arnold  would  have  foimd  difficult  to  define.  Certainly 
this  much  can  be  said.  If  Emerson  is  not  "a  great  writer,  a  great 
man  of  letters,"  yet,  in  his  unfolding  of  ideas  and  in  his  portrayal 
and  criticism  of  nature  and  of  life,  he  has  nobly  fulfilled  and  is  still 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A   STUDY.  91 

fulfilling  the  function  of  a  great  man  of  letters  to  thousands  of 
disciplined  minds;  interpreting  for  them  and  teaching  them  to 
interpret  nature  and  man,  educating  their  judgments,  cultivating 
their  taste,  introducing  them  to  "the  best  that  has  been  thought 
and  written,"  and  stimulating  and  ennobling  their  whole  intellectual 
life.  And  if  he  is  not,  as  Mr.  Arnold  says  he  is  not,  "sensuous 
and  impassioned"  in  his  poetry,  we  must  not  forget  that  reflective 
poetry  is  Emerson's  best  and  most  characteristic  poetic  achieve- 
ment; that  reflective  poetry  cannot  possibly  be  "sensuous  and 
impassioned";  and  that  Mr.  Arnold  is  prejudiced  against  all  reflec- 
tive poetry,  and,  indeed,  does  not  think  it  poetry,  whether  it  be 
Emerson's  or  Wordsworth's. 

But  though  Mr.  Arnold  does  Emerson  injustice  in  these  two 
negative  propositions;  I  think  that,  in  his  positive  statement,  he 
has  firmly  seized  and  happily  formulated  Emerson's  dominating 
quality.     He  has  given  us  the  real  clue  to  the  significance  of  Emer- 
son's Hterary  product,  regarded  as  a  whole,  when  he  says  of  him: 
"Emerson  is  the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the 
spirit."     The  friendship  of  Emerson  for  "  those  who  would  live  in 
the  spirit"   is,  indeed,   his   characteristic  trait.     He  is  also  their 
"  aider,"  as  Mr.  Arnold  says.     But  the  aid  he  offers  them  is  con- 
ditioned precisely  by  the  fact  that  he  is  a  man  of  letters  and  a  poetic 
interpreter  of  nature  and  of  life,  and  that  he  does  not  bring  to  them 
a  philosophy.   I  say,  the  aid  he  ofl'ers  is  conditioned  by  this  lack 
of  a  philosophy;  and  by  conditioned  I  mean  limited.     For  because 
of  it  the  realm  of  nature  and  spirit,  as  he  presents  it,  is  vast  indeed, 
but  vague  and  undefined  and,  so  far  forth,  unrevealed.     And  there- 
fore, as  Mr.  Arnold  himself  points  out,  his  aid  is  confmed  to  the 
sphere  of  the  moral  sentiments  and  action.     Mr.  Arnold  does,  in- 
deed, express  the  opinion  that  "as  Wordsworth's  poetry  is  the 
most  important  work  done  in  verse  in  our  language  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  so  Emerson's  essays  are  the  most  important  work 
done   in  prose."     But  this  is  the  language  of  purely  personal 
judgment.     Far  more  important    for  us  in  estimating  Emerson, 
with  Mr.  Arnold's  help,  as   "an  aider  of   those  who  would  live 
in  the  spirit,"   is  the  sentence  in  which  he  formulates  the  pre- 
cise content  of  the  aid  which  Emerson  extends.     And  this  is  the 
sentence:  "Happiness  in  labor,  righteousness  and  veracity;  in  all 
the  life  of  the  spirit;  happiness  and  eternal  hope — that  was  Emer- 
son's gospel."     A  fair  and  felicitous  description  it  is.     And  how 
clearly  it  reveals  the  limit  of  the  aid  which  Emerson's  gospel  offers! 
How  clearly  it  reveals  that  the  aid  extended  is  not  the  aid  of  a 


92  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW. 

great  thinker  in  the  sphere  of  ultimate  knowing  and  absolute 
being,  but  is  aid  confined  to  the  sphere  of  the  moral  sentiments 
and  action! 

Thus,  by  a  route  somewhat  circuitous  indeed,  but  I  trust  not 
wholly  without  interest  or  propriety,  we  reach,  in  Mr.  Arnold's 
characterization  of  Emerson,  the  formula  of  which  I  spoke  as 
finely  expressing  Edwards'  dominating  and  unifying  quality. 
Edwards  like  Emerson  is,  above  all  else  and  by  eminence,  "the 
friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit."  Who 
that  knows  him  at  all  will  deny  to  him  a  right  equal  to  that  of 
Emerson  to  this  high  title?  Of  course,  they  differ  widely  both  in 
the  aid  they  offer  and  in  their  methods  of  offering  it.  Emerson's 
aid  is  conditioned  and  limited,  as  I  have  already  said,  by  his  want 
of  a  firm  and  self-consistent  doctrine  of  the  universe,  by  his  want 
of  a  philosophy.  And  we  must  be  just  as  ready  to  acknowledge 
that  Edwards'  aid  is  as  clearly  conditioned  and  limited  by  his 
unfortunate  poverty  in  the  humanities,  by  his  notable  lack  of 
feeling  for  poetry  and  letters.  On  the  other  hand  and  positively 
I  think  we  may  say,  that  it  would  be  hard  to  name  a  man  of  let- 
ters who,  having  separated  himself  from  all  formulated  philosophi- 
cal and  religious  beliefs,  has  more  nearly  than  Emerson  exhausted 
the  resources  of  letters  and  poetry  in  the  service  of  "  those  who 
would  live  in  the  spirit."  And  among  the  great  doctors  of  the 
Christian  Church,  it  would  be  as  hard  to  name  one  more  distinct- 
ively spiritual  in  character  and  aim  than  Edwards,  or  one  who,  in 
cultivating  the  spiritual  life  in  himself  and  promoting  it  in  others, 
has  more  consistently  or  more  ably  drawn  on  the  resources  of 
his  philosophy,  his  world-view,  his  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
imiverse. 

I  am  quite  sure  that  this  obvious  likeness  and  difference  be- 
tween Edwards  and  Emerson  is  the  right  point  of  departure  for 
any  large  study  of  their  affinity  and  opposition.  Such  a  study 
the  day  invites  us  to  mention,  but  does  not  permit  us  to  under- 
take. The  day  belongs,  not  to  the  great  Puritan  who  gave  up 
the  Puritan  conception  of  the  universe  for  its  interpretation  by 
poetry  and  letters,  but  to  the  great  Puritan  who  denied  himself 
the  high  satisfactions  of  literature,  that  through  his  distinctively 
Christian  doctrine  of  God  and  man  he  might  be  "  the  friend  and 
aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit."  It  is  to  his  spiritu- 
ality, and  to  his  intellectual  gifts  and  work,  that  I  ask  your 
attention. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A  STUDY.  93 


How  many  writers   have   portrayed   what  one   of  them   calls 
the  "spirituality  of  mind"  of  the  Northern  and  Teutonic  peo- 
ples!    One  of  the  most  striking  passages  in  Taine's  English  Lit- 
erature contrasts  in  this  particular  the  Latin  and  Teutonic  races. 
And  a  New  England  theologian  and  man  of  letters,  in  unfolding 
the  truth  that  the  Northern  nations  of  Europe,  unUke  the  Southern, 
were  ''spiritual  in  their  modes  of  thought,"  calls  our  attention  to 
the  fact  that  "the  Northern  heathen  had  fewer  gods  than  the 
Southern,  and  could  believe  in  their  reality  without  the  aid  of 
visible  form.     He  hewed  no  idol,  and  he  erected  no  temple;  he 
worshiped  his  divinity  in  spirit,  beneath  the  open  sky,  in  the  free 
air."     How  far  this  spiritual  temper  can  be  attributed  to  climate,  to 
"the  influences  which  rained  down  from  the  cold  Northern  sky," 
we  cannot  say.     Racial  character  would  best  be  accepted  as  an 
ultimate  fact.     The  fact  itself  is  certain,  that  among  the  European 
peoples,  the  race  to  which  Edwards  belonged  was  most  strongly 
marked  by  this  spiritual  quahty.     Moreover,  it  was  precisely  by 
the  greater  strength  and  intensity  of  this  racial  quality  that  the 
Puritan  class  was  separated  as  a  class  from  ^their  own  people. 
Spirituality  is  what  the   logicians  call  the  specific   difference  of 
Puritanism.     The  unshaken  belief  in  the  reality  of  the  spiritual 
universe,  the  ability  to  realize  its  elements  without  the   aid  of 
material  symbols,   the  strong  impulse  to  find  motives  to  action 
in  the  unseen  and  eternal,  to  feed  the  intellect  and  the  heart 
on  spiritual  objects,  and  in  distinctively  spiritual  experiences  or 
exercises   to   discern  the    highest  joys  and  the  deepest  sorrows 
and  the  great  crises  of  life — these  were  the  traits  of  the  Puri- 
tans.    And  these  traits  were  exhibited,  not  by  a  few  cloistered 
souls  who  obeyed  the  "counsels  of  perfection"  and  were  secluded 
from   their   fellows   by  special   vows   of   poverty,    celibacy   and 
obedience,  but  by  the  mass  of  the  population  in  Puritan  New 
England;  by  countrymen  and  villagers  and  citizens  and  statesmen. 
This  spirituality  organized  the  governments  and  determined  the 
politics   of   vigorous   commonwealths.     Theocratic   republics,    as 
spiritual  as  that  which,  under  Savonarola,  had  so  short  a  life  in 
Florence,  flourished  for  generations  on  American  soil.     It  was  in 
this  Puritan  society  that  Jonathan  Edwards'  American  ancestors 
lived.    They  were  typical  Puritans,  justly  esteemed  and  influential 
in  the  communities  in  which  they  dwelt.     The  convictions,  tradi- 
tions and  spirit  of  the  class  were  theirs.     This  was  especially  true 
of  both  his  father  and  his  mother.     The  simplicity,  the  sincerity, 


94  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW. 

the  spirituality  of  Puritanism  at  its  best  were  incarnate  in  them; 
and  it  was  the  Puritan  ideal  of  life  which,  before  his  birth,  they 
prayed  might  be  actualized  in  their  unborn  child. 

Belonging  to  this  spiritual  race,  sprung  from  this  spiritual  class, 
descended  from  such  an  ancestry  and  born  of  such  a  parentage, 
we  have  the  right  to  anticipate  that  his  dominant  quality  will  be 
this  spirituality  of  which  I  have  spoken.  We  have  the  right  to 
look  for  what  Dr.  Egbert  Smyth  calls,  "Edwards'  transcendent 
spiritual  personality,"  and  concerning  which  he  says,  that  "the 
spiritual  element"  in  Edwards  "is  not  a  mere  factor  in  a  great  career, 
a  strain  in  a  noble  character.  It  is  his  calmest  mood  as  well  as 
his  most  impassioned  warning  or  pleading,  his  profoundest  reason- 
ing, his  clearest  insight,  his  widest  outlook.  It  is  the  solid  earth 
on  which  he  treads."  Dr.  Smyth  has  thus  stated  in  suggestive 
phrase  the  supreme  truth  concerning  Edwards;  the  truth  that  his 
dominating  quality,  his  differentiating  trait,  his  prevailing  habit  of 
mind,  is  spirituality.  The  time  at  my  disposal  does  not  permit 
the  illustration  of  this  great  quality  in  any  adequate  way.  I  can 
only  touch  on  a  few  particulars  which  may  help  us  better  to 
appreciate  it. 

The  careful  student  of  Edwards  is  deeply  impressed,  first  of  all, 
by  his  immediate  vision  of  the  spiritual  universe  as  the  reality  of 
realities.  When  I  speak  of  the  spiritual  universe,  I  am  giving  a 
name  to  no  indefinite  object  of  thought.  I  mean  God  in  His  super- 
natural attributes  of  righteousness  and  love,  the  moral  beings  cre- 
ated in  His  image,  the  relations  between  them,  and  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  and  activities  which  emerge  out  of  these  relations.  This 
was  the  universe  in  which  Edwards  lived  and  moved  and  had  his 
being.  As  he  apprehended  it,  it  was  no  mere  subjective  experience, 
no  mere  plexus  of  sensations  and  thoughts  and  volitions.  It  was 
the  one  fundamental  substance  and  the  one  real  existence.  It 
was  the  one  objective  certainty  which  stands  over  against  the 
shadowy  and  illusory  phenomena  that  we  group  under  the  title 
matter.  And  his  vision  of  it  was  vivid  and  in  a  sense  complete. 
He  knew  it  not  only  in  its  several  parts,  but  as  a  whole;  as  an 
ordered  universe;  as  the  macrocosm  which  he,  the  microcosm, 
reflected  and  to  which  he  responded. 

All  this  is  true  in  a  measure,  to  be  sure,  of  all  the  other  saints 
and,  indeed,  of  the  sinners  also.  It  is  in  what  I  have  called  the 
immediacy  of  his  spiritual  apprehension  that  his  distinction  lies. 
There  is,  of  course,  a  sense  in  which  the  spiritual  world  is  immedi- 
ately discerned  by  all  of   us.      It    is    of   spirit   rather   than  of 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A  STUDY. 

matter  that  our  knowledge  is  direct.  That  consciousness  of  a 
self  which  cannot  be  construed  in  terms  of  matter,  or  that  idea 
of  self  which  is  a  necessary  postulate  of  all  our  thinking  brings  us 
at  once  into  the  universe  of  spirit..  But  in  order  to  the  vivid 
realization  of  this  spiritual  universe,  there  is  necessary  for  the  most 
of  us  a  special  activity  or  experience.  And  by  this  activity 
or  experience  our  realization  of  the  spiritual  world  is  mediated. 
Edwards,  in  this  respect,  is  a  remarkable  exception  in  his  own 
class.  Consider  some  great  and  notable  men  of  the  spiritual  type. 
Consider  St.  Augustine.  How  true  it  is  that  the  great  elements 
of  the  spiritual  world  became  vivid  to  Augustine  through  the 
mediation  of  his  experience  of  sin!  And  that  these  spiritual 
elements  were  always  interpreted  by  the  aid  of  that  experience  his 
Confessions  abundantly  testify.  Or  think  of  Dante.  As  Augus- 
tine reveals  in  his  Confessions  the  instrumental  relation  to  his  deep- 
ening spirituality  of  the  long  period  of  sinful  storm  and  stress, 
Dante  makes  perfectly  clear  to  us  in  The  New  Life  that  it  was  the 
love  of  Beatrice  which  so  mediated  for  him  the  spiritual  world  and 
so  brought  him  under  its  sway,  that  in  order  to  repeat  and 
interpret  the  vision  of  it  he  laid  under  contribution  his  total  gifts 
and  learning.  Or  take  John  Calvin.  That  fruitful  conception — 
more  fruitful  in  Church  and  State  than  any  other  conception  which 
has  held  the  English-speaking  world — of  the  absolute  and  universal 
sovereignty  of  the  Holy  God  as  a  revolt  from  the  conception  then 
prevailing  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  human  head  of  an  earthly 
Church,  was  historically  the  mediator  and  instaurator  of  his 
spiritual  career. 

Now  Edwards  is  distinguished  from  Augustine,  Dante  and 
Calvin  by  the  fact  that  his  intuition  of  the  spiritual  uniyerse  was, 
in  the  sense  in  which  I  have  used  the  word,  immediate.  To  a  degree 
I  should  be  unwilling  to  afRrm  of  any  other  man  I  have  studied, 
except  one,  his  spirituality  was  natural.  That  he  was  a  sinner, 
needing  regeneration  and  atonement,  he  knew.  That  these  were 
his  blessed  experience  he  was  gratefully  assured.  But  except  the 
apostle  called  by  eminence  "  the  Theologian,"  St.  John  the  Divine, 
I  know  no  other  great  character  in  Church  History  of  whom  it  can 
so  emphatically  be  said,  that  when  he  ''breathed  the  pure  serene" 
of  the  spiritual  world  and  gazed  upon  its  outstanding  features,  or 
explored  its  recesses,  or  studied  the  inter-relations  of  its  essential 
elements,  he  did  so  as  ''native  and  to  the  manner  born."  To 
quote  again  the  words  of  Dr.  Smyth:  "It  is  the  solid  earth  on 
which  he  treads,  its  sleeping  rocks  and  firm-set  hills." 


^ 


96  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW. 

The  spiritual  universe,  thus  vividly  and  immediately  appre- 
hended as  the  reality  of  realities,  of  course,  became,  in  turn,  the  inter- 
preter to  himself  of  all  he  did  and  felt.  It  became  even  the  regnant 
principle  of  his  association  of  ideas,  so  that  the  unpurposed  move- 
ments of  his  mind  in  reverie  were  determined  by  it.  How  influen- 
tial in  his  earliest  thinking  it  was,  you  will  see  if  you  study  his  Notes 
on  mind  and  ultimate  being;  and  how  persistent  it  was,  you  will 
see  in  his  latest  observations  on  The  End  of  God  in  Creation. 
It  governed  his  aesthetics  also.  The  line  between  aesthetic  emotion 
and  spiritual  feeling  is  sharp,  and  wide,  and  deep.  Often  as  the  two 
are  confounded  by  those  whose  sensibilities  are  strongly  stirred  by 
beauty  in  nature  or  in  fine  art,  it  is  still  true  that  they  are  as  dis- 
tinct as  spirit  and  matter.  The  aesthetic  emotion  is  ultimate  and 
never  can  be  made  over  into  spiritual  affection.  No  one  knew  this 
better  than  Edwards.  But  through  both  reflection  and  experience 
he  reached  and  formulated  the  conclusion,  that  the  highest  and 
most  enduring  aesthetic  emotion  is  that  which  is  called  out  not  by 
material  beauty  but  by  holiness.  And  he  may  be  said  to  have  un- 
folded the  great  mediaeval  phrase,  "The  beatific  vision  of  God," 
into  the  doctrine  of  the  highest  beauty,  in  his  epoch-making  treatise 
— epoch-making  in  America  certainly  the  treatise  was — on  The 
Nature  of  Virtue.  This  seems  to  me  a  striking  instance  of  the  way 
in  which  his  spirituality  permeated  and  irradiated  his  thinking, 

I  think  that  even  the  traits  of  Edwards'  style  are  best  explained 
by  this  same  quality.  It  has  often  been  said  of  him  that  style  is 
precisely  what  Edwards  lacked.  We  are  told  that,  after  reading 
Clarissa  Harlowe,  he  expressed  regret  that  in  his  earlier  years  he 
did  not  pay  more  attention  to  style.  We  may  be  thankful  certainly 
that  he  did  not  form  his  style  on  that  of  the  affluent  Richardson. 
I  am  imable  to  share  the  regret  he  expressed;  unless,  indeed,  it 
was  a  regret  that  he  did  not  always  take  pains  to  make  his  literary 
product  eminent  in  the  qualities  of  style  which  always  marked  it. 
Edwards  was  above  all  things  sincere ;  and  his  style  is  the  man.  Its 
qualities  are  clearness,  severe  simphcity,  movement  and  force.  In 
these  he  is  eminent,  almost  as  eminent  as  John  Locke;  and  he  is 
more  eminent  in  his  later  than  in  his  earlier  compositions.  They 
finely  fit  his  theme  and  his  spirit.  His  theme  in  substance  is  one. 
It  is  the  spiritual  universe,  in  some  aspect  of  it.  And  his  spirit  is 
that  of  a  man  dominated  by  those  spiritual  affections  which  he 
teaches  us  are  a  lively  action  of  the  will.  It  was  appropriate  that 
his  style  should  be  calm  and  severe,  and  that  even  in  his  sermons 
jt  should  lack  the  dilation  and  rhj^thm  of  a  rapt  prophet's  emo- 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A  STUDY.  97 

I" 

tional  utterance.  Edwards  was  no  Montanist.  He  was  a  seer, 
indeed,  but  a  seer  with  a  clear  vision;  and  the  spirit  of  the  prophet 
was  subject  to  the  prophet.  No  man  of  his  day  was,  so  far  as  I 
know,  the  subject  of  stronger  or  deeper  spiritual  affections.  But 
no  one  knew  better  just  what  spiritual  affections  are.  He  knew 
especially  how  different  they  are  from  mere  sensibility;  and  he 
was  always  calm  under  their  sway.  No  other  style  than  his  could 
have  so  well  reflected  and  expressed  this  spiritual,  unhysterical 
man.  And  I  must  believe  that  his  is  the  direct  fruit  of  his  spiritual 
quality.  Certainly,  it  was  spiritually  effective.  Never  did  any  one's 
discourse  make  a  more  powerful  and  at  the  same  time  a  more 
distinctively  and  exclusively  spiritual  impression  on  audience  or 
readers.  One  of  the  most  charming  of  modern  poems  is  that  in 
which  Tennyson  portrays  the  Lady  Godiva,  that  she  might  take 
the  tax  from  off  her  people,  riding  at  high  noon  through  Coventry 
"naked,  but  clothed  on  with  chastity."  So  seem  to  me  the  bare 
and  unadorned  sermons  and  discussions  of  Edwards,  Straight 
through  his  subject  to  his  goal  this  master  moves;  unadorned 
yet  not  unclothed,  but  clothed  upon  with  spirituahty. 

Or  consider  Edwards'  emotional  hfe.  Dr.  Allen,  of  Cambridge, 
in  his  paper  on  The  Place  of  Edwards  in  History,  has  dwelt 
fondly  on  what  he  calls  the  spiritual  affinity  between  Dante  and 
Edwards.  He  makes  the  remark,  that  ''the  deepest  affinity  of 
Edwards  was  not  that  with  Calvin  or  with  Augustine,  but 
with  the  Florentine  poet."  Now,  I  am  sure,  that  of  his  affinity 
with  Augustine  and  with  Calvin  Edwards  was  distinctly  conscious. 
But  nowhere,  so  far  as  I  know,  is  there  the  slightest  intimation 
that  he  had  any  interest  in  Dante's  New  Life  or  TJie  Divine 
Comedy.  He  was  no  idealizing  poet,  no  literary  artist,  no  allego- 
rizer;  and  he  seems  to  have  taken  little  or  no  pleasure  in  this  kind 
of  literature.  Had  there  been  a  fundamental  sympathy  between 
Dante  and  Edwards,  it  would  have  expressed  itself  in  Edwards' 
works  with  Edwards'  characteristic  distinctness.  But  not  only  is 
Dante  not  mentioned,  but,  what  is  more  striking,  there  is  not  an 
allusion,  I  think,  in  Edwards'  works  to  the  poems  of  the  Puritan 
John  Milton  or  the  allegories  of  the  Puritan  John  Bunyan.  This 
seems  inexplicable  on  Dr.  Allen's  theory  of  a  strong  affinity  between 
the  New  England  theologian  and  the  Florentine  poet.  Most  un- 
happy, however,  is  the  palmary  instance  of  this  alleged  affinity 
selected  by  Dr.  Allen  for  remark.  It  is  what  he  calls  the  strik- 
ing spiritual  likeness  between  Dante's  words  touching  his  first  sight 
of  Beatrice  and  Edwards'  description  of  Sarah  Pierpont.     I  refer 


98  THE  PRISCETOS  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW. 

to  them,  not  to  criticise  Dr.  Allen,  but  because  the  striking  con- 
trast between  them  helps  us  the  better  to  appreciate  the  regnancy 
of  Edwards'  spiritual  quality,  even  when  he  was  under  the  spell 
of  earthly  love. 

And  the  contrast  is  striking.  Dante  in  noble  and  beautiful 
words  describes  the  dress  that  Beatrice  wore.  ''Her  dress  on 
that  day  was  a  most  noble  color,  a  subdued  and  goodly  crimson, 
girded  and  adorned  in  such  sort  as  best  suited  with  her  tender 
age."  He  exalts  her  in  a  way  which  Edwards  would  have  severely 
reproved ,  in  the  words,  "  Behold  the  deity  which  is  stronger  than 
I,  who  coming  to  me  will  rule  within  me."  And  he  confesses  in 
powerful  and  poetic  phrases  the  violent  effect  upon  his  body  which 
his  strong  emotion  produced.  The  whole  picture  is  charming, 
poetic,  ideal,  and  was  written  in  a  book  for  the  public  years  after 
the  boy  had  seen  the  girl.  The  greatest  poet  of  his  time,  if  not 
of  all  time,  in  maturer  life  looks  back  upon  the  meeting  and,  with 
consummate  art,  I  do  not  say  with  insincerity,  transfigures  it. 

How  different  is  Edwards'  well-known  description  of  Sarah  Pier- 
pont!  It  was  written  in  Edwards'  youth,  four  years  before  his 
marriage;  not  in  a  book  for  the  public,  but  on  a  blank  leaf  for  his 
own  eye.  In  its  own  way  it  is  as  engaging  as  Dante's.  But  its 
way  is  not  artistic  or  imaginative  at  all.  It  is  distinctively  and 
exclusively  spiritual.  There  is  no  idealization,  no  translation  of 
the  object  of  his  love  into  a  symbol,  no  physical  transport,  no  agi- 
tation, no  ''shaking  of  the  pulses  of  the  body."  We  learn  nothing 
of  Sarah  Pierpont's  dress  or  appearance  or  temperament.  All  he 
tells  us  about  her  is  about  her  spiritual  qualities  and  her  relations 
to  the  spiritual  universe.  And  at  the  last,  on  his  deathbed,  he 
sends  to  his  absent  wife,  this  Sarah  Pierpont,  his  love;  and  again 
speaks  of  the  uncommon  union  between  them  as,  he  trusts,  spir- 
itual and  therefore  immortal.  Read  in  connection  with  the  brief 
references  to  his  household  life  to  be  found  in  his  biography,  these 
passages  bring  before  us  a  man  whose  closest  and  tenderest  earthly 
love  was  transfigured,  not  by  artistic  genius,  but  by  what  I  have 
called  his  dominating  spirituality.  And  both  passages  issue  natur- 
ally out  of  that  spiritual  conception  of  beauty  which  he  has  so 
finely  unfolded  in  the  great  essay  on  Virtue. 

This  same  quality  manifests  itself  in  the  impartiality  and  im- 
personality of  his  feeling  under  conditions  well  calculated  to  awaken 
strong  partial  and  personal  feelings.  Go  through  the  whole  history  of 
the  unfortunate  Northampton  controversy.  Read  the  correspond- 
ence of  Edwards,  his  speeches  before  the  several  Councils  and  the 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A  STUDY.  99 

Farewell  Sermon.  Or  mark  his  behavior  under  the  trying  condi- 
tions of  a  recrudescence  in  Stockbridge  of  the  enmity  shown  at 
Northampton.  And  you  will  see  what  I  mean,  when  I  say  that  his 
spirituality  is  exhibited  in  the  impartiality  of  his  feelings  and  the 
impersonality  of  their  objects.  You  will  agree  with  me  that  in  all 
of  it  he  was  true  to  his  thesis;  that  private  feelings  must  be  subordi- 
nated to  that  benevolence,  that  spiritual  love  of  being  in  general, 
which  is  the  essence  of  virtue.  Indeed,  I  recall  no  other  instance 
of  a  severe  and  protracted  trial,  in  which  the  chief  figure  appears 
so  unconcerned  about  everything  except  its  spiritual  significance. 

But  it  is  in  the  work  to  which  he  gave  himself,  in  the  subjects  on 
which  he  labored,  in  his  method  of  treatment,  in  the  conclusions 
he  reached,  that  Edwards'  spirituality  is  most  impressively  re- 
vealed. He  was  interested  apparently  in  nothing  but  the  spiritual 
universe  and  the  spiritual  life.  Of  course,  the  whole  of  Edwards 
is  not  known  to  us.  We  rarely,  if  ever,  catch  sight  of  him  in  his 
avocations,  so  strong  was  his  sense  of  vocation.  I  discover  in  him  no 
interest  in  politics,  in  literature,  in  the  plastic  or  even  the  intellec- 
tual arts.  In  distinctively  intellectual  pursuits  other  than  religious 
he  did  at  times  engage.  But  he  engaged  in  them,  certainly  in  his 
maturer  years,  only  in  order  to  the  thorough  concentration  of  his 
powers  on  his  spiritual  work.  Thus,  when  his  mind  was  strained  by 
excessive  study  and  would  not  hold  itself  to  a  severely  spiritual 
train  of  thought,  or  when  his  imagination  rose  in  rebellion  and 
tempted  him,  he  whipped  each  into  subjection  by  setting  his 
powers  to  the  solution  of  a  difficult  mathematical  problem;  and 
so  he  regained  possession  of  himself  solely  for  high  spiritual  pur- 
poses. And  how  spiritual  his  purposes  were  let  the  titles  of  his  works 
testify,  from  the  first  published  sermon  to  the  great  treatises  on 
Sin,  Virtue  and  the  Will,  and  finally  the  great  Body  of  Divinity  in 
historical  form,  which  in  his  letter  to  the  Trustees  of  Princeton  he 
describes  as  his  coming  work,  and  in  describing  which  his  soul 
expands  and  his  style,  almost  for  the  first  time,  becomes  rhythmical. 

We  are  therefore  entitled  to  say  with  emphasis  that  the  dominant 
quality  of  Edwards  is  spirituality — spirituality  of  mind,  of  feeling, 
of  aim  and  action.  The  spiritual  universe  was  for  him  not  only  the 
most  certain  and  substantial  of  reahties,  but  the  exclusive  object 
of  contemplation.  Purely  spiritual  feeling  seems  to  have  filled  in 
his  life  the  great  spaces  which  in  the  lives  of  most  men  are  occupied 
by  passionate  sensibilities  and  aesthetic  pleasures.  Or  we  may 
better  say,  that  his  exceptional  personality  was  the  alembic  in  which 
these  sensibilities  and  pleasures  were  transmuted  into  the  pure 


100  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW. 

distillate  of  spiritual  feeling;  until  all  his  outgoing  and  active  affec- 
tions rested  on  spiritual  qualities  and  objects,  and  all  his  reactions 
of  emotion  were  the  blessednesses  of  the  spirit.  When  his  will 
energized  and  called  the  great  powers  of  his  intellect  into  action, 
it  was  on  the  most  spiritual  themes  that  his  mind  wrought  with  the 
greatest  ease  and  geniality.  Distant  in  manner  and  reserved  on 
most  subjects,  whenever  he  conversed  about  heavenly  and  divine 
things  of  which  his  heart  was  so  full,  "his  tongue,"  says  Dr.  Samuel 
Hopkins,  "  was  as  the  pen  of  a  ready  writer."  The  spiritual  world 
so  completely  possessed  him  that  its  contemplation  and  exposition 
seems  never  to  have  tired  him.  After  receiving  the  invitation  to 
Princeton,  he  told  his  eldest  son  that  for  many  years  he  had  spent 
fourteen  hours  a  day  in  his  study.  Spiritual  thinking  and  feeling 
were  thus  both  his  labor  and  his  recreation. 

This  exclusive  spirituality  of  Edwards  explains  his  lack  of  charm 
and  interest.  For  obviously  he  is  lacking  here.  Compare  with  the 
lack  of  interest  in  Edwards  the  interest  the  world  has  always  taken 
in  Luther,  in  the  stormy  career  of  Knox,  in  the  incessant  and  varied 
activity  of  Calvin,  and  earlier  than  these  in  the  dramatic  life  of 
Augustine.  Shall  we  say  that  he  charms  us  less  because  he  was  a 
more  spiritual  man,  or  only  because  he  was  more  exclusively  spirit- 
ual; because  he  was  less  wealthily  endowed  with  humane  sympa- 
thies? Is  it  because  of  his  delicate  organization  and  feeble  vitality? 
Or  is  it  because,  under  the  domination  of  the  spiritual  universe, 
and  knowing  well  his  own  powers  and  limitations,  he  determined 
to  know  this  one  thing  only?  Or  is  it,  after  all,  only  the  defect 
of  his  biographers?  I  do  not  know.  Certainly  he  presents  a 
striking  contrast  to  the  other  great  spiritual  men  whom  I  have 
named.  And  I  think  we  are  bound  to  acknowledge  that  his  re- 
markable separation  in  spirit  from  the  feelings  and  tastes  and  occu- 
pations of  the  people  seriously  limited  his  usefulness,  and  seriously 
limits  it  to-day.  But  when  all  is  said,  his  spirituality  is  his  strength. 
And  in  a  world  where  social  charm  and  sympathy  is  abundant,  and 
where  high  and  exclusive  spirituality  is  in  the  greatest  men  as 
rare  as  radium;  we  ought  to  rejoice  that  of  one  of  the  greatest  it  is 
true  that  he  was  bond-slave  to  the  spiritual  world. 

The  clue  to  Edwards  then,  his  dominating  and  irradiating 
quality,  the  trait  which  gave  unity  to  his  career,  is  his  spirituality. 
His  was  indeed,  to  repeat  the  fine  wonl  of  Dr.  Egbert  Smyth, 
"a  transcendent  spiritual  personality." 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A  STUDY.  101 

II. 

I  have  detained  you  so  long  on  this  subject  that  I  must  treat 
briefly  and  inadequately  Edwards'  intellect  and  work. 

It  was  as  a  bond-slave  then  to  the  spiritual  universe  that  all  his 
work  was  done.  Now  his  work  was  not  that  of  a  philanthropist 
or  a  missionary.  It  was  the  work  of  a  thinker.  The  instrument 
with  which  he  wrought  was  his  intellect;  and  the  word  which  de- 
scribes the  quality  as  distinguished  from  the  subject  of  his  writings 
is  the  word,  intellectual.  This  is  as  true  of  his  sermons  as  it  is  of 
his  elaborate  treatises.  And,  as  a  whole,  his  works  constitute  an 
intellectual  system  of  the  spiritual  universe. 

Eminently  intellectual  in  his  activity,  Edwards,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  had  no  intellectual  pride.  His  intellect  he  regarded  simply 
as  an  instrument  to  be  employed  in  the  service  of  the  spiritual 
world.  And  as  such  an  instrument,  if  we  would  do  him  justice, 
we  must  regard  it.  We  must  seize  and  estimate  its  outstanding 
traits,  as  they  reveal  themselves  in  this  characteristic  activity 
which  he  solemnly  accepted  as  his  vocation.  What,  then,  were 
the  distinctive  traits  of  Edwards'  intellect,  and  what  position  must 
we  assign  to  him  among  intellectual  men,  especially  among 
theologians? 

The  genius  of  Luther  and  that  of  Calvin  have  often  been  con- 
trasted. There  is  a  general  agreement  that  while  Luther  saw 
single  truths  with  the  greater  clearness  and  the  sooner  recognized 
their  capital  value,  to  Calvin  must  be  attributed  in  greater  measure 
the  gift  of  construction ;  the  great  gift  by  which  he  organized  in  a 
system  the  principles  of  the  Protestant  Reformation.  Now 
though  Edwards  nowhere  shows  the  boldness  and  originality  of 
either  of  these  men;  though  he  never  inaugurated  a  new  mode  of 
Christianity  like  Luther  or  organized  its  theology  like  Calvin, 
and,  therefore,  holds  no  place  beside  them  in  history;  he  had  both 
a  gift  of  penetration  like  Luther's  and  a  gift  of  construction 
like  Calvin's.  It  is  also  true,  I  think,  that  in  the  subtlety  of  his 
intellect  he  was  greater  than  either.  The  man  of  all  men  whom 
he  seems  to  me  most  like  intellectually  and,  indeed,  every  way — 
in  the  character  of  his  religious  experience,  in  his  genial  acceptance 
of  the  theological  system  he  inherited,  in  his  philosophical  insight, 
in  his  power  in  the  exposition  of  abstract  truth,  in  his  fruitfulness, 
in  his  constructive  ability  and  in  his  failure  nevertheless  to  leave 
behind  him  a  completed  system,  in  his  fimdamental  philosophical 
and  theological  views,  in  his  idealism  and  Platonism — is  Anselm  of 
Canterbury.     And,  having  regard  to   the  works  they   have    left 


102  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW. 

behind  them — the  one,  the  Monologium  and  Proslogiuvi,  the  Tract 
on  Predestination,  the  Prayers  and  Meditations,  the  Essay  on  Free 
Will  and  the  Cur  Deus  Homo,  and  the  other,  the  great  sermons, 
the  treatises  on  The  Nature  of  Virtue,  The  End  of  God  in  Creation, 
Original  Sin,  Justification  hy  Faith,  The  Religious  Affections  and 
The  Nature  of  the  Freedom  of  the  Will — I  think  that  Edwards 
stands  fully  abreast  of  the  mediaeval  philosopher  and  theologian. 
Had  Dante  known  Edwards  as  we  know  him,  he  would  have  given 
him  a  place  beside  Ansehn  in  the  Heaven  of  the  Sun. 

In  saying  that  Edwards  is  like  Anselm,  I  have  also  in  mind  the 
fact  that  there  are  two  great  classes  of  theologians.  All  Christian 
theology  rests  on  Holy  Scripture.  But  theologians  strikingly 
differ  among  themselves  in  the  importance  they  respectively 
assign  to  the  history  of  doctrine  and  the  Church's  symbols  on 
the  one  hand,  and  to  the  concord  between  the  Word  of  God 
and  the  reason  on  the  other.  In  the  mediaeval  Church  there 
were  school  divines  who  rested  solely  on  history  and  author- 
ity; who  had  no  confidence  in  the  argument  from  the  reason; 
who  did  not  believe  that  there  is  a  theologia  naturalis.  This 
tendency  was  strongest,  perhaps,  in  the  [Franciscan,  Duns 
Scotus.  In  modern  Protestant  Churches,  the  tendency  is,  per- 
haps, strongest  in  the  high  Anglican  writers.  Now  while  Edwards 
was  in  harmony  with  the  Reformed  Confessions,  the  absence 
of  the  Confessional  or  historical  spirit  is  noticeable  in  all  his 
theological  treatises.  The  lack  of  it  is  explained  partly  by 
his  training.  In  the  curriculum  of  the  American  Colonial 
College  historical  studies  were  slight  and  elementary,  while  studies 
which  discipline  the  powers  were  pursued  with  a  vigor  and  sin- 
cerity which  the  modern  University  would  do  well  to  promote. 
We  must  regret,  I  think,  the  lack  in  this  great  American  theolo- 
gian of  large  historical  culture  and,  by  consequence,  of  the 
historical  spirit.  Because  of  it  there  is,  in  the  positiveness  of  his 
assertions,  in  his  strong  confidence  in  logical  analysis  and  dialectic 
in  themselves,  and  in  his  historical  generalizations  in  The  History 
of  Redempticn,  a  quality  which  it  is  right  to  call  provincial. 

But  if  he  is  defective  at  this  point,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  that 
he  is  one  of  the  greatest  Doctors  of  the  Universal  Church  by  reason 
of  his  singular  eminence  in  three  capital  qualities.  In  the  first  place, 
he  is  far  more  powerful  than  most  theologians  in  his  appeal  to  the 
reason  in  man.  I  mean  the  reason  in  its  largest  sense  and  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  understanding.  The  reason  itself,  he  held,  as 
if  he  were  a  Cambridge  Platonist,  has  a  large  spiritual  content.    If 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A   STUDY.  103 

I  understand  him,  he  went  beyond  the  Westminster  Divines  in  the 
value  he  put  upon  the  Light  of  Nature.  Of  his  actual  appeal  to 
the  reason,  including  under  that  term  the  conscience  and  the  relig- 
ious nature,  I  have  time  only  to  say  that  it  permeates  and  gives 
distinction  to  his  entire  theological  product.  He  addresses  it  with 
large  confidence  in  his  sermons,  in  his  essay  on  The  End  of  God  in 
Creation,  in  his  chapter  on  the  Satisfaction  of  Christ  written  in  the 
very  spirit  of  the  Cur  Deus  Homo,  in  all  his  endeavors  to  quicken 
in  reader  and  hearer  the  sense  of  guilt  and  the  fear  of  its  punish- 
ment, in  his  great  discourse  on  Spiritual  Light,  and  in  his  great 
volume  on  the  Religious  Affections.  In  all  of  them  a  consummate 
theologian  of  the  reason  distinctly  appears.  To  this  we  must  add 
his  supremacy  in  the  related  gifts  of  clear  exposition,  subtle  dis- 
tinction, and  acute  polemic.  To  this  supremacy  the  world  has 
borne  abundant  testimony.  If  he  is  like  Anselm  in  his  high  esti- 
mate of  the  reason,  he  is  like  Thomas  Aquinas  in  his  dialectical 
acuteness.  Nor  is  this  acuteness  mere  quickness  of  vision  and 
alertness  in  logical  fence.  His  two  greatest  polemic  works  are 
probably  the  essays  on  Original  Sin  and  The  Freedom  of  the  Will. 
Both  of  them  are  profound  as  well  as  acute;  both  are  large  in  their 
conception  of  the  subject;  and  in  both  he  is  fair  to  his  antagonist, 
and,  though  not  so  largely,  yet  as  really  constructive  as  he  is  polemic. 
To  these  we  must  add,  finally,  a  consummate  genius  for  theo- 
logical construction.  No  one  can  go  through  his  collected  works 
even  rapidly,  as  I  was  compelled  to  do  this  summer,  without  seeing 
that  a  self-consistent  World-view  or  theory  of  the  Universe  was 
distinct  and  complete  in  the  consciousness  of  Edwards,  and  that  it 
is  the  living  root  out  of  which  springs  every  one  of  his  sermons 
and  discussions.  No  theological  writer  is  less  atomistic.  None 
is  less  the  prey  of  his  temporary  impulses  or  aberrations.  No 
theological  essays  less  merit  the  name  of  disjecta  membra.  The  joy 
of  the  completed  literary  presentation  of  this  universal  system,  this 
spiritual  and  intellectual  Cosmos,  was  denied  him.  But  it  is  in  his 
works,  just  as  completely  as  Coleridge's  system  is  in  the  Biographia 
Literaria  and  the  Table  Talk,  just  as  clearly  as  Pascal's  Pyr- 
rhonism lies  open  to  us  in  his  fragmentary  Thoughts.  Had  he 
lived  to  complete  at  Princeton  his  History  of  Redemption,  his  ''  body 
of  divinity  in  an  entire  new  method,"  it  is  my  belief  that  the  world 
would  have  seen  in  it  the  fruit  of  a  constructive  genius  not  less 
great  than  that  which  appears  in  the  Summa  of  St.  Thomas  or  in 
the  Institutes  of  Calvin. 
Though  no  theologian  more  habitually  conceived  the  spiritual 


104  THE  FRINCETOX  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW. 

world  as  objective,  yet  his  great  powers  and  special  talents  wrought 
best,  and  he  produced  his  best  work,  when  he  was  writing  on  the 
religious  life.  That  life  he  knew  well,  because  of  his  own  profound 
and  vivid  religious  experience.  But  he  never  wrote  out  of  his 
experience  alone.  The  spiritual  universe  as  a  whole  is  before  him 
as  he  writes.  It  is  always  therefore  the  ideal  religious  life  of  the 
redeemed  sinner  he  is  describing.  Hence  its  severity,  its  purity,  its 
deep  humility  as  it  measures  itself  with  the  absolute  ethical  and 
spiritual  perfection.  If  we  do  not  wish  to  sink  into  despair,  we 
nmst  not  forget  this  as  we  read  the  greatest  of  his  tracts,  the 
essay  on  The  Religious  Affections. 

A  theologian,  so  profound  and  so  individual  as  Edwards  was, 
could  not  but  have  made  many  contributions  of  the  highest  im- 
portance to  theological  science.  Now  whatever  Edwards'  distinct- 
ive contributions  to  theology  were,  it  is  important  to  notice  that 
they  were  contributions  to  the  historical  theology  of  the  Christian 
Church.  He  was  in  full  concord  with  the  great  Ecumenical  Coun- 
cils on  the  Trinity  and  the  Person  of  Christ.  He  thoroughly  ac- 
cepted the  formal  and  material  principles  of  the  Reformation. 
And  he  was  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  great  system  known  as 
Calvinism,  or  the  Reformed  Theology.  His  greatness  as  a  theolo- 
gian and  his  fruitfulness  as  a  writer  are  rooted  in  the  consent  of 
his  heart,  as  well  as  the  assent  of  his  mind,  to  these  historical 
doctrines.  And  though,  as  I  have  said,  individually  he  was  not  dis- 
tinctly informed  by  the  historical  spirit,  yet  he  is  in  the  line  of  the 
historical  succession  of  Christian  theologians. 

Turning  to  these  distinctive  contributions  I  have  time  to  name 
only  one ;  but  that  one  has  been  of  immense  historical  importance 
in  America.  Jonathan  Edwards  changed  what  I  may  call  the 
centre  of  thought  in  American  theological  thinking.  There  were 
great  theologians  in  New  England  before  Edwards.  I  mention  only 
John  Norton  of  Ipswich,  and  Samuel  Willard  of  Harvard.  They 
followed  the  Reformed  School  Divines  not  only  in  making  the 
decree  of  God  the  constitutive  doctrine  of  the  system,  but  in  em- 
phasizing it.  Edwards  did  not  displace  the  eternal  Decree  as  the 
constitutive  doctrine ;  but  by  a  change  in  emphasis  he  lifted  into  the 
place  of  first  importance  in  theological  thinking  in  America  the  in- 
ward state  of  man  in  nature  and  in  grace.  He  appears  to  have  been 
led  strongly  to  emphasize  these  related  themes,  partly  by  the  Great 
Awakening,  and  partly  by  the  controversy  on  the  Half-way  Cove- 
nant which  followed  it.  No  one,  however,  but  a  man  of  genius 
could  have  made  this  change  in  emphasis  so  potent  a  fact  in  Ameri- 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A  STUDY.  105 

can  Church  history.  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  influence 
thus  exerted  by  Edwards  on  American  theological  and  religious  dis- 
cussions and  on  American  religious  life.  If  I  may  so  say,  here  is 
the  open  secret  of  the  New  England  theology  from  Samuel  Hopkins 
to  Horace  Bushnell.  And  more  than  to  any  other  man,  to  Edwards 
is  due  the  importance  which,  in  American  Christianity,  is  attributed 
to  the  conscious  experience  of  the  penitent  sinner,  as  he  passes 
into  the  membership  of  the  Invisible  Church. 

Quite  as  important  as  this  distinctive  contribution  is  the  tre- 
mendous stimulus  and  impetus  he  gave  to  theological  speculation 
and  construction.  When  I  think  of  the  Edwardean  School  of  New 
England  theologians  from  Samuel  Hopkins  to  Edwards  Park,  be- 
tween whom  are  included  so  many  brilliant  men,  too  many  even 
to  be  named  at  this  time ;  when  I  think  of  the  Edwardean  theolo- 
gians in  my  own  Church,  like  Henry  Boynton  Smith  and  William 
Greenough  Thayer  Shedd;  when  I  think  of  the  fruitful  history  of 
his  works  in  Scotland  and  England,  and  recall  his  real  mastery 
over  the  minds  he  influenced;  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that,  up  to  this  time,  his  influence  in  the  English- 
speaking  world — not  on  all  thinking,  but  on  distinctively  dogmatic 
thinking — has  been  as  great  as  that  of  either  Joseph  Butler  or 
Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge. 

I  have  thus  endeavored  to  set  before  you  my  impressions  of 
Edwards'  dominating  quality,  his  intellectual  gifts,  and  the  kind 
of  work  he  did;  and  to  state  the  place  which  in  my  view  he  holds 
among  the  theologians  of  the  Universal  Church.  I  have  refrained 
from  eulogy.  He  is  too  consummate  and  sincere  a  master  for  us  to 
approach  with  the  language  of  compliment.  But  I  should  incom- 
pletely perform  the  duty  you  have  devolved  upon  me,  did  I  fail 
to  speak  of  two  of  his  works  which  have  been  violently  and  re- 
peatedly attacked.  One  is  the  essay  on  The  Freedom  of  the  Will. 
The  other  is  the  Sermons  on  the  Punishment  of  the  Wicked. 

The  essay  on  the  Freedom  of  the  Will  is  essentially  a  polemic, 
and  only  incidentally  a  constructive  treatise.  As  a  polemic,  there- 
fore, it  must  be  judged.  He  had  before  his  mind,  not  the  whole 
voluntary  nature  of  man  as  a  subject  to  be  investigated,  but  the 
special  Arminian  doctrine  of  the  liberty  of  indifference  as  an  error 
to  be  antagonized.  What,  therefore,  the  essay  shows  is,  not  his 
constructive  ability,  but  his  ability  as  an  antagonist.  I  have 
read  carefully  only  one  other  treatise  in  which  the  propositions  as 
obviously  move  forward  in  procession,  with  steps  as  firmly  locked 
together.     This  other  treatise  is  the  Ethics  of  Spinoza.     If  you  dare 


lOt)  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW. 

consentingly  to  follow  Spinoza  through  his  three  kimls  of  knowl- 
edge up  to  his  definition  of  substance — which,  since  it  is  thought 
not  in  a  higher  category  but  in  itself,  is  self-existent;  which  is 
and  can  be  one  only;  and  whose  known  attributes  "perceived 
to  be  of  the  essence  of  this  substance"  are  infinite  thought 
and  infinite  extension — if  you  follow  Spinoza  thus  far;  you 
will  soon  find  yourself  imprisoned  in  a  universe  of  necessity, 
and  bound  in  it  by  a  chain  of  theorems,  corollaries  and  lemmas 
impossible  to  be  broken  at  any  point.  Your  only  safety  is  in  obeying 
the  precept,  Ohsta  principiis.  Quite  equal  to  Spinoza's  is  Edwards' 
essay  in  its  close  procession  of  ordered  argument.  Like  Spinoza 
he  begins  his  treatise  with  definitions.  And  I  cannot  see  how 
anyone,  who  permits  himself  to  be  led  without  protest  through  the 
first  of  the  "  Parts"  of  the  essay,  can  refuse  to  go  on  with  him  at  any 
point  in  the  remaining  three.  In  reading  the  treatise  one  should, 
above  all,  keep  in  view  the  fact  that,  though  it  is  i)olemic  against  a 
particular  theory,  it  was  written  in  the  interest  of  a  positive  theo- 
logical doctrine.  I  think  we  shall  do  justice  to  this  doctrine  if  we 
state  it  in  terms  like  the  following:  "Man's  permanent  inclination 
is  sinful;  and  his  sinful  inclination  will  certainly  qualify  his  moral 
choices."  This  Augustinian  doctrine  Edwards  defended  by  a  closely 
reasoned  psychology  of  the  will.  Now  I  am  not  sure  that  this  great 
doctrine,  which  I  heartily  accept,  was  at  all  aided  by  Edwards  w^ien 
he  involved  it  with  and  defended  it  by  a  particular  psychology. 
And  my  doubt  is  deepened  by  what  seems  to  me  his  unnecessary  em- 
ployment, in  the  spiritual  sphere,  of  terms  taken  from  the  sphere  of 
nature,  like  "  cause,"  "  determination"  and  "  necessit5^  "  I  can  only 
call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  defense  of  the  religious  doc- 
trine, and  not  his  psychology,  was  Edwards'  deepest  anxiety.  And 
who  of  us  is  not  prepared  to  say,  that  the  bad  man's  badness  is  a 
permanent  disposition  certain  to  emerge  in  his  ethical  volitions, 
and  that  to  revolutionize  it  there  is  needed  the  forth-putting  of 
the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost? 

But  it  is  Edwards'  sermons  on  The  Punishment  of  the  Wicked 
which  have  awakened  the  strongest  enmity;  an  enmity  expressed 
often  in  the  most  violent  terms.  The  rational  and  Scriptural 
basis  of  the  doctrine  and  the  objections  to  it  need  not  be  set  forth 
here.  Edwards  accepted,  defended  and  proclaimed  it,  substan- 
tially in  the  form  in  which  it  has  been  taught  in  the  Greek,  the 
Latin  and  the  Protestant  Churches.  It  is  the  doctrine  of  the 
Fathers,  the  mediaeval  Schoolmen  and  the  Protestant  theologians. 
Edwards'  doctrine  of  Hell  is  exactly  one  with  the  doctrine  of  Dante. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A  STUDY.  107 

Now  it  is  of  interest  to  note  that  there  is  a  widespread  revulsion 
from  Edwards,  considered  as  the  author  of  these  Sermons,  which 
does  not  and  so  far  as  I  am  aware  never  did  appear  in  the  case  of 
Dante,  considered  as  the  author  of  the  Inferno.  What  is  the  ex- 
planation of  the  difference?  Dante  is  praised  and  glorified  by  not 
a  few  of  those  to  whom  the  name  of  Edwards  is  for  the  same  reason 
a  name  of  "execration  and  horror."  Indeed,  Dante  has  been  de- 
fended by  a  great  American  man  of  letters  for  rejoicing  in  the  pain 
of  the  damned ;  while  no  one  of  Edwards'  sermons,  unless  it  is  Sin- 
ners in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry  God,  has  been  more  severely  criti- 
cised as  inhuman  than  the  discourse  entitled,  The  Torments  of  the 
Wicked  in  Hell  no  occasion  of  Grief  to  the  Saints  in  Heaven.  We 
shall  do  well,  therefore,  to  note  the  contrast  between  Dante's  and 
Edwards'  presentation  of  the  same  subject. 

When  Dante  was  sailing  through  the  Lake  of  Mud  in  the  Fifth 
Circle  of  Hell,  there  appeared  before  him  suddenly  Philippo  Argenti, 
who  in  this  world  was  full  of  arrogance  and  of  disdain  of  his  fellow- 
men,  now  clothed  only  with  the  lake's  muck.  Pathetically  he  an- 
swers Dante's  inquiry,  "Who  art  thou  that  art  become  so  foul?" 
with  the  words,  "Thou  seest  I  am  one  who  weeps."  And  Dante 
replies,  "  With  weeping  and  with  wailing,  accursed  spirit,  do  thou  re- 
main, for  I  know  thee  although  thou  art  all  filthy."  Then  Virgil 
clasps  Dante's  neck  and  kisses  his  face  and  says,  "  Blessed  is  she  who 
bore  thee !"  And  Dante  replies,  "  Master,  I  should  much  like  to  see 
him  ducked  in  this  broth  before  we  depart  from  the  lake."  And 
Virgil  promises  that  he  shall  be  satisfied.  "And  after  this,"  con- 
tinues Dante,  "  I  saw  such  rending  of  him  by  the  muddy  folk  that 
I  still  praise  God  therefor  and  thank  Him  for  it.  All  cried,  'At 
Philippo  Argenti!'  and  the  raging  Florentine  spirit  turned  upon 
himself  with  his  teeth.  Here  we  left  him;  so  that  I  tell  no  more  of 
him."  This  is  one  of  the  passages  in  Dante's  poem  of  that  Hell 
over  whose  entrance  he  read  these  words;  "Through  me  is  the 
way  into  eternal  woe;  through  me  is  the  way  among  the  lost  people. 
Justice  moved  my  high  creator;  the  divine  Power,  the  supreme 
Wisdom,  and  the  primal  Love  made  me.  Before  me  were  no  things 
created  unless  eternal,  and  I  eternal  last.  Leave  every  hope,  ye 
who  enter  here." 

There  is  nothing  in  Edwards  which,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  equals 
this  in  its  horrid  imagery  and  suggestion.  And  yet  men  enjoy 
Dante  and  the  Inferno.  They  do  not  "execrate"  him  for  a  "  mon- 
ster," as  Dr.  Allen  says  they  do  Edwards.  And  in  his  great  essay 
on  Dante,  Mr.  James  Russell   Lowell  makes  this  very  scene  the 


108  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW. 

text  of  an  eloquent  laudation  of  Dante's  moral  quality,  in 
which  he  says  of  him ;  "  He  believed  in  the  righteous  use  of  anger, 
and  that  baseness  was  its  legitimate  quarry."  Why  is  it  that  the 
attitude  of  the  general  public,  thus  represented  by  Mr.  Lowell, 
toward  the  Hell  of  Dante  is  so  different  from  the  attitude  of  the 
same  public  toward  the  Hell  of  Edwards?  I  think  we  shall  find 
an  answer  to  this  question  in  what  I  may  call  Edwards'  spiritual 
realism.  Of  course  Dante  is  a  realist  also.  How  often  this  quality 
of  his  poem  has  been  pointed  out  to  us!  But  Dante's  is  the  realism 
of  the  artist,  the  poet  who  appeals  to  our  imagination.  Our  imagi- 
nation being  gratified,  we  enjoy  the  picture  and  even  the  sensations 
of  horror  which  the  picture  starts.  Of  all  this  there  is  nothing  in 
Edwards.  There  is  no  picture  at  all.  There  is  scarcely  a  symbol. 
Here  and  there  there  is  an  illustration.  But  the  illustrations  of 
Edwards  are  never  employed  to  make  his  subject  vivid  to  the 
imagination.  They  are  intended  simply  to  explicate  it  to  the  un- 
derstanding. The  free,  responsible,  guilty  and  immortal  spirit  is 
immediately  addressed;  and  the  purely  spiritual  elements  of  the 
Hell  of  the  wicked,  separated  from  all  else,  are  made  to  appear  in 
their  terrible  nakedness  before  the  reason  and  the  conscience.  The 
reason  and  the  conscience  respond.  We  are  angry  because  startled 
out  of  our  security.  And  we  call  him  cruel,  because  of  the  con- 
viction forced  on  us  that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  terrible,  even 
if  mysterious,  spiritual  reality.  Edwards  always  spoke,  not  to 
the  imagination,  but  to  the  responsible  spirit.  Men  realized  when 
he  addressed  them  that  because  they  are  sinners  their  moral 
constitution  judicially  inflicts  upon  their  personality  remorse ;  and 
that  remorse  is  an  absolute,  immitigable  and  purely  spiritual  pain, 
independent  of  the  conditions  of  time  and  space  and,  therefore, 
eternal. 

The  Nineteenth  Century,  in  one  of  its  greatest  poets,*  looking 
out  on  nature,  sees  no  relief  from  this  eternity  of  remorse ;  that  is 
to  say,  it  sees  no  evidence,  in  nature's  "tooth  and  claw  "  that  God 
will  ever  interfere  to  end  this  spiritual  pain  and  punishment.  It 
only  "  hopes"  that,  "  at  last,  far  off, "  "  Winter  will  turn  to  Spring." 
I  shall  not  attack  any  man  for  a  hope,  maintained  against  the 
evidence  of  remorse  within  and  nature  without,  that  the  mystery 
of  pain  and  moral  evil  will  be  thus  dissipated  in  their  destruction. 
It  is  not  my  business  to  denounce  a  thoughtful  and  reverent  spirit 
like  Tennyson,  because  of  any  relief  he  may  individually  find,  when 
facing  the  most  terrible  revelation  of  nature  and  of  his  moral  con- 

*  In  Memoriam,  liii-lvi. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:  A  STUDY.  109 

stitution,  in  the  "hope"  which  issues  from  our  sensibiHty  to  pain 
and  from  the  sentiment  of  mercy  which  God  has  implanted  in  us  all. 
But  I  do  say,  that  a  man's  private  "  hope  "  should  never  be  elevated 
to  the  dignity  of  a  dogma,  or  be  made  a  norm  of  teaching,  or  be  pro- 
posed as  a  rule  of  action.  And  I  do  protest  that  it  is  the  height  of 
literary  injustice,  while  praising  Dante,  to  condemn  Edwards  the 
preacher  because,  in  his  anxiety  to  induce  men  to  "  press  into  the 
kingdom,"  he  preached,  not  the  private  hope  of  Lord  Tennyson, 
but  the  spiritual  verity  to  which  the  conscience  of  the  sinner  re- 
sponds. Thus,  in  his  treatment  of  this  darkest  of  subjects,  that 
spirituality  which  I  have  said  was  his  dominant  quality  is  regnant ; 
and  here,  too,  he  should  be  called,  ''  the  friend  and  aider  of  those 
who  would  live  in  the  spirit." 

With  this  protest  I  conclude.  Let  me  say  again,  that  I  am 
deeply  grateful  to  you  for  the  opportunity  you  have  given  me  to 
unite  with  you  in  this  commemoration  of  the  man  we  so  often  call 
our  greatest  American  Divine.  He  was  indeed  inexpressibly  great 
in  his  intellectual  endowment,  in  his  theological  achievement,  in 
his  continuing  influence.  He  was  greatest  in  his  attribute  of  reg- 
nant, permeating,  irradiating  spirituality.  It  is  at  once  a  present 
beatitude  and  an  omen  of  future  good  that,  in  these  days  of  pride  in 
wealth  and  all  that  wealth  means,  of  pride  in  the  fashion  of  this 
world  which  passeth  away,  we  still  in  our  heart  of  hearts  reserve 
the  highest  honor  for  the  great  American  who  lived  and  moved 
and  had  his  being  in  the  Universe  which  is  unseen  and  eternal. 

Princeton.  ,  John  DeWitt. 


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